Dixie Browning - The Beauty, The Beast And The Baby

While she was still mentally comparing him to the overdressed, overscented men she had worked with for the past few months, he lifted her throbbing hand. She flinched, anticipating pain, but his touch was surprisingly gentle as he wrapped paper towels over the ba ck of her hand. It was when he was folding the half-filled bag of ice around her swollen fingers that she noticed the fresh scar on the thumb side of his left hand. Swallowing a nervous urge to giggle, she said, “It looks like, between us, we have one good pair of hands.”

He didn’t even spare her a glance. “That hurt? Sorry. Ice’ll take down some of the swelling. You allergic to aspirin?”

She shook her head.“ No. That is, yes, I know it will, and no, I’m not.”

He pulled a tin of tablets from his shirt pocket, dumped two into her free hand and another two into his own. Then he got two drinks from the cooler, twisted off the tops and handed her one.

It was lemon-lime. She didn’t like lemon-lime, but she drank it anyway, to wash down the painkiller.

“Got a proposition for you,” he said, and she waited warily.“ The way I see it, you’re in no shape to drive, even if you had a driver’s license. You really ought to see a doctor about that hand, and—”

“No. No, thank you.”

“If it’s broken-”

“It’s not.” She couldn’t afford for it to be broken, not with Basil bringing the baby down from Atlanta on Saturday. Couldn’t afford it, period.

“Don’t get your back up so fast. Just hear me out, okay?”

“Look, I’ll stop off and see a doctor on the way home, all right? And while I appreciate all you’ve done, Mr. Wydowski, I really don’t need your help.”

He muttered something under his breath, and Mariah was just as glad she hadn’t heard him clearly. He stared at her for the longest time, making her acutely aware of her lank, wet hair, her damp, stained clothes under the stiff vinyl coat, and the fact that whatever makeup she had started out with that morning had long since been rained off, chewed off and otherwise eroded.

Shoulders sagging, Mariah thought that if she’d needed a reminder of who she was and where s he belonged, this did the job. Underneath the glossy finish, she was still plain old Sara Mariah Brady, perennial baby-sitter, bespectacled beanpole who, until at the advanced age of twenty-five, she’d made a fool of herself over Vance Brubaker, had been the oldest living virgin in captivity. At least in Muddy Landing.

Evidently, the man read body language. He’d probably known the moment he heard her sigh, saw her sagging shoulders, that she was no match for him. “Go ahead and say what you’re thinking,” she said dully. “I’m listening.”

Which was how she came to find herself a short while later in a motel room somewhere near Saint Augustine. The police had come and gone, for all the good it had done. Her car was back at the gas station, parked in an out-of-the-way spot. Gus had tossed everything from her back seat into the surprisingly ample space behind the seat of his truck.

“What the hell do you have in here, bricks?” he grumbled, carting the last of the boxes into her room.

“Do you have something against bricks?”

He sent her a sour look, and she was reminded that he had an injured hand, too. “It’s books,” she said. “You didn’t have to bring all that stuff. It would’ve been all right in the car until morning.”

“Do you have a phone credit ca—” Gus caught himself. Of course she didn’t have a phone credit card. It had gone the way of all her other credit cards. “Make whatever calls you need from the room, okay?” He tried to sound gracious, but gracious wasn’t his style.

He could have been halfway down the coast by now, but, dammit, he couldn’t just drive off and leave her to spend the night where she was. That creep in the service station would have charged her for the floor space she took up. He’d charged for leaving her clunker there overnight, for the plastic bags and the paper towels and the drinks. Gus knew damned well she’d been mentall y running a tab while he was settling up with the guy. She’d asked him to write down his address so she would know where to send the money.

He’d seen the look on her face when he’d hauled out one of his business cards. what the devil did she take him for, a bum? Was she afraid he was going to hit on her? Was that why she was so worried?

Because she was worried, all right, and he had a feeling it was more than just getting mugged. That little ditto mark between her eyebrows wasn’t due to an excess of happy thoughts.

Gus did his best not to look at her any more than he could help, on account of he liked what he saw too much. It was a good thing she’d kept her raincoat on, ‘because in spite of a few superficial deficiencies of a strictly temporary nature, she was something else. Not exactly drop-dead gorgeous. Not even pretty, in the usual sense. The trouble was, she had the kind of timeless beauty he’d always been a sucker for.

“Maybe you’d better start calling a few people. Family, husband, that kind of thing, but if you want my advice, you’ll call first and put a stop on your credit cards before you find yourself in real trouble.”

“Real trouble?” she asked, a brittle edge to her voice that Gus didn’t like, not one bit. “You mean’the kind I’m in now isn’t real? You know, I did think for a few minutes there that I might be dreaming.”

As a joke, it wasn’t even in the running, but he gave her high marks for trying. Maybe after a night’s sleep and a good meal, they’d both feel better. “Hey, are you as hungry as I am? I skipped a few meals today.”

“Thanks, but I’m not at all—”

“Piece of pie might lift your spirits,” he tempted. He could have reminded her that she was in hock so deep now that the price of a meal wasn’t going to make that much difference, but he didn’t.

“Actually, now that you mention it, I’m ravenous,” she admitted.

He found himself dangerously close to liking her. Studying her with the practiced eye of a connoisseur, Gus summed up what he saw. Five-ten, ten-and-a-half, about 112 pounds. A size six, he figured. Lisa was a size eight. This woman was smaller boned. Almost fragile.

Back off, man! You’ve taken the cure, remember?

“So what’ll it be, steak? Seafood?” he prompted.

“I had a bag of boiled-”

“Peanuts. Right. They’re on top of the box of bricks. Look, why don’t I check with the desk and see what’s available around these parts while you make your calls? I’m in the room next door. Just bang on the wall when you’re ready.’”

Gus walked out and slammed into his own room next door, thinking about all the times he’d stopped to pick up a stray mutt and ended up with a stack of vet’s bills and a houseful of fleas, not to mention a few bites. He took the time to shower and change into clean khakis and a black knit shirt. Fortunately, his favorite boots were past the polishing stage. He kept them dressed with wet-proofing, so they still looked pretty good to his way of thinking.

He wondered if his effort to look respectable would reassure the skittish woman in the room next door. He was already beginning to regret the impulse that had made him take on her case. Maybe he should have just bought her a tank of gas, wished her well and kept on going. Unfortunately, that hadn’t been an option. Even feeling like hell warmed over, strung out on caffeine, sugar and aspirin, all it had taken was one look at those stricken eyes of hers and he’d gone down for the count.

At least he could take comfort in knowing she wasn’t on the road with a busted mitt and no driver’s license, trying to make Georgia on a dark, rainy night. Although, grimacing at his shaggy image in the mirror as he collected his wallet, keys and pocket change, Gus couldn’t say muc h for the judgment of any woman who would meekly allow a stranger to drive her to the nearest motel, no matter how innocent the situation appeared on the surface.